Tuesday 5 March 2019

Week 1 [04-10.03.19] How to get on with someone you hate at work

Watch the video at https://www.bbc.com/ideas/videos/how-to-get-on-with-someone-you-hate-at-work/p072bwd0 and comment on it. Present your personal experiences and solutions to the problem.

30 comments:

  1. Long story short, I've got this guy at work who's all the time try to do everything to do nothing. At first for couple of months I didn't notice this, then it become funny for some time but at the point when we are obligated to work together on the same project it became strongly annoying. To be honest I don't think that most of the recommendations from this video would work for me. I think it's part of his nature and nothing won't change him. He wisely act like overworked. I think for my mental health it's best to make a laught of it from time to time and just ignore it. I was even trying to make a friendly suggestion so he'll start to work his :))) off but still nothing changes. I think most of us know at least one person like this and we just have to cooperate with them.

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  2. I have never been in a situation where I couldn't stand other person at work. I don't like some of my coworkers behaviour but it doesn't mean that I hate them!
    And of course it doesn't mean that I would bother thinking about how much something annoys me - I have better things to do ;)
    I think that working together is a matter of good will and as metioned in a video - open communication so there are no misunderstandings.

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    Replies
    1. I have similar point of view. Even if somebody annoys me I don’t hate him and don’t waste my time thinking about him. However I experienced that open communication is not enough in some situations. Sometimes problem isn’t in communication, but rather in totally different understanding of rules and values, but still it’s wasting time and energy to think about it to much. Once, when cooperation with my college was difficult I just asked my boss, not to force us to work together and if we had to do something in one team I focused on my work not on his behavior.

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  3. I think it's very complex problem and there's no universal solution for this, since every situation and person is different.
    Actually, I can't remember any coworker I've really hated but if there's someone I can't really stand and his behaviour doesn't affect me personally, I just try to ignore him. I believe it's not something I should really care about. The real problem would be if someone's harmful actions were directed towards me. Fortunately I didn't have such a situation but I believe my actions would be more straightforward then.

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  4. I never had this issue at work that I would absolutely hate or something more. I try to avoid people I don't get well along with. If that situation would happen I would just try to avoid his or her as much as possible. Of course that is not always an option but it worked for me most of the time.
    If this would be a bigger situation like say mobbing then I wouldn't hesitate to go someone higher to talk about that person.

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  5. I think there is no one good remedy for all cases. Sometimes it is enough to force the self to change a view for a given person, sometimes it is not. Sometimes somebody is so pain in the us (;p) and we can do nothing about it. It depends much on people and also how supervisors care about such behaviours. In one job I had to deal with some unpleasant acts by myself, but in another the boss solved the problem himself and the preson who acted unfriendly was fired.
    In a past I also watched a discourse of a buddhist monk who teached how to deal with hard people in your environment. He explained that it is worth to use a sandwich method, i.e. you shall say somethig nice before you say something less nice or some harsh comments... and you can additionally cover it with something nice again. It really helps ;) When you convince yourself that you like somebody, you act like you like the person and he/she likes you back then. If it is opposite, they treat you like you treat them, even subconsciously, f.ex. by a dangerous look, or not making a friendly act. Firstly you should change yourself, before you demand something from the others.

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  6. I was in a situation where people at work hated me.

    Long story. In short: it was a small, "family" company, with people with an average age of 40.

    I was the youngest of them and they thought that someone so young shouldn't work with them.

    In Polish, colloquially, we would call them "Janusze". That was “Janusz” kind of people.

    I stayed there for three months and I quit. It was a good decision because there was no possibility to grow.

    After this terrible experience, If I can't stand someone, I just put headphones and focus on music. I try to avoid people I don't get well along with. Of course If this would be something worse like mobbing then I wouldn't hesitate to go someone higher.

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  7. I don't tend to hate. Sometimes I don't like someone. However, in my job I work with a person who can't be liked (she is arrogant, saucy and pretentious). Generally she is disliked. The rest of my colleagues also don't hide their intentions. I have never seen such a relationship from my side to another human being before. Generally, I always try to get along with colleagues but I can't do it with this person.

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  8. I used to work in a team where all employees had similar skills, except one. Both me and my colleagues tried to influence his attitude, but the more we tried to influence him, the more he opposed. I do not act like this anymore. People are different and I have no influence on everyone.

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  9. I haven't had such problems so far. Most of the bands were in tune. I relied on my colleagues and they on me.
    The only exception is my current team.
    One of the members can make me "white fever". I don't like his style of being, the way he works and so on.
    I often needed to express my feelings towards him, of course behind his back.
    During one such discussion I heard that I should not be so much concerned about it.
    Since then, I have been trying not to worry about this person's behaviour.
    I threw away the bad emotions towards this person.
    I think that the solution to this problem lies mainly on our side.
    We cannot influence the behaviour of others, but we can control yourself.

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  10. I am in a good situation because I like everyone in my work. Of course, there are people who are irritated by certain behaviors, but these are temporary situations. For example, a colleague who sits next to me loudly drinks his tea, but then I put headphones on my ears and turn on the music to drown out. There is another girl in my team who loves to complain that she does not feel well, that her job is not going. At the beginning I tried to support her and give me some encouragement, but my efforts were for nothing and at that moment I do not pay attention to it.

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  11. I believe the hatred is too strong feeling in this case - I would rather reserve hatred for people who really harm me, not for coworkers. I am of the opinion that it is natural that I disline some of other employees at my workplace. Needless to say, People have various personalities, typical behaviours (that may be found annoying by others) and therefore it is not possible to get on well with everybody. Throughout my work in my previous company, I met different people. Some of them were really friendly and always eager to help, others were hard to interact with (particurarly management team, frequently looking down on the ordinary employee). I only once had a real argument, it was with technical architect of my project - extremely experienced and wise guy. I never regretted having argued with him - I managed to prove him wrong, gaining his respect in that way (I was not longer being treated as rookie :)). I believe then that the best of way of dealing with people I do not like is to put things straight and discuss points of contention (even quarrel with them, obviously in the controllable manner) it should help improve the mutual relationships eventually

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  12. Personally I had that one person I really don’t like at work. It is one of my colleagues that I’m with on project for about ten months now. This persons type of personality is really annoying for me and I believe it is matter on my personality too. My solution to problem was to do the same things that this person was doing to me. It wasn’t something really annoying for that person but for me it was great exercise to see how this person can see the world. It came up to this we elaborate way of communicating that for me is funny and for that person is natural.

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  13. I can't tell that I have really hated anyone at work, but I cant tell that there are people that get on my nerves. I try to be professional and don't allow myself to get emotional at work, so I rarely have to fix a relationship with my work collages. As previously mentioned, simply trying to communicate 'better' with such a person in most cases won't change or improve anything, its just a matter of difference in believes. However if someone is lazy, slow, messy or incompetent in any other way that would directly influence the team or project I would simply escalate this to the manager. There are few ways to do that, like 360 reviews, one-on-one's and so on. So as a team member i feel obligated to report such observation, but I'm not a person to solve this issue.

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  14. Most of the jobs I've been doing was handled remotely so my expirience with meeting "hard" people in work is limited but I encountered a lot of difficult clients. I could count their types and characteristic but there is no point because all of them affect you in the same way which is: make your life harder. From expirience I can assure you that coming in disscisuion is like death sentence. It will only drive you crazy. The best thing to do in my opinion is to move out of the way and secure yourself with good contract. Of course it all comes with experience but I believe that adding fuel to the fire is the worst what we can do. You don't have to talk about how people annoying you behind their back or even talk with them personally. You have your job to do. Do it and move on

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  15. From my perspective, when someone is annoying me, I'm just turning it into a joke and let him/her know about it. With using this strategy, people don't feel offended and can change their behaviour. Also we need to remember that maybe from time to time, we're on the other side. The best option is to treat each other in same way as we want to be treated by them. Also, clear communication is our ally to solve problems. We can feel irritated but still, there is no reason to hate :)

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  17. Once in a past I had a colleague, who was really annoying me. It led me to frustration in our relations rather than hate. It was because of fact that he made the same mistakes all the time. We were developing an appliaction, so during code reviews I pointed him my suggestions. We agreed what to do with his code, he aggreed it's best to make it other way, finally he fixed it, but next time same old mistake. Talking with him did not make much sense. Finally, he handed in a resignation, what brought a relief. I think that hate is vere strong and negative emotion. It would be very hard for me to experience it every day 8 hours a day. In such case I would strive to resolve the conflict, I strongly believe that every problem has it's solution.

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  18. This short video makes us really think about our interpersonal relations. It teach us, that we have to learn to accept others even if we don't like them. We should just face the problem and ignore it or talk to that person about it no make a small difference between us. It is just work and we aren't able to choose our coworkers. This video is also an easy way to understand, that to know someonr you need to talk to them. It is simple, but many people just judge others because of things they've heard about them. It's so inappropriate.

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  19. The first tip presented in this video is really important. Having a conversation when something is not clear can be a useful thing in any kind of conflict. In my work I just try to talk with person who is getting angry. I’ve noticed that bad mood has its source in personal life. Most of the time, short conversation helps team getting back on track and stops disturbing work.

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  20. It’s a real problem. In my opinion, when you are ‘convicted’ to work with a person you really don’t like, there is no other solution like ask your supervisor to change it. In other case it will accumulate, and some day will explode. Personally, I can’t imagine that I’m involved in some project with person I hate.

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  21. I think we all have this one colleague at our work, at least one. Also in my case there is this one person who's always making my angry. I don't really feel like I hate this person, we are just not getting on with each other. We can't find any common language, each time I try to have a conversation with this person it ends up really quickly and I keep avoiding it each day. Nevertheless, I don't think that any of proposed methods in the video can be useful in my case, I've tried those and ended up even more annoyed and I think that such things cannot be pushed and forced. For me the best way is to ignore that person and focus on yourself.

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  22. We have to acknowledge and accept, that nobody likes everybody. We're never going to like everyone we meet. As soon, as we encounter someone we don't like, we have to accept it. Not liking someone doesn't make us a negative person, it's just the way things are. However we can never allow a harmful person have a negative effect on our emotions.
    We have to keep calm, when dealing with this person, we have to concentrate on the issues, rather than attack the individual personally and directly.



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  23. There are some habits that annoy me regarding my co-workers but I can't say that I hate those actions. If something annoys me so much I try to go out somewhere or I put headphones on and focus on work and music. We are mostly grown ups, so it's hard to say to someone "don't eat like that", or "stop moaning", because there is a very low percent of probability that it will end up with success. So I just try to avoid situations when I'm annoyed with actions of somebody, that's my way to handle some situations.

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  24. I think I'm lucky enough that I actually never had situation where I straight up hated any of my coworkers, but of course on a few occasions I worked with people who were mildlyinfuriating so to say ;)

    In general I partially agree with what it is said in the video, to face the problem, talk with the other person and try to understand each other. On the other hand I think its much easier said then done. If you already don't like the other person (and especially if the other person doesn't like you either) its really difficult to force yourself to talk with this person, additionally if someone is shy it would be even harder to do it.

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  25. Once I've had coworker which wasn't easy to stand. After few month I've noticed that I'm not the only one who sees coworker's behavior which was very annoying. We were hoping that working in scrum methodology where team is open and talks about everything we can tell this person what's bothering us, but he was too stubborn so we just had to live with him.

    All things said in video are very helpful and I regret a bit that I haven't seen it earlier but for some cases there is no help and we just have to live with this or try to ignore. It all depends from person who is that one we hate. Before we try to talk with him/her even in private we have to do some research first and plan how to start such conversation to achieve the desired effect.

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  26. I was logged on wrong account. :(

    Once I've had coworker which wasn't easy to stand. After few month I've noticed that I'm not the only one who sees coworker's behavior which was very annoying. We were hoping that working in scrum methodology where team is open and talks about everything we can tell this person what's bothering us, but he was too stubborn so we just had to live with him.

    All things said in video are very helpful and I regret a bit that I haven't seen it earlier but for some cases there is no help and we just have to live with this or try to ignore. It all depends from person who is that one we hate. Before we try to talk with him/her even in private we have to do some research first and plan how to start such conversation to achieve the desired effect.

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  27. Personally, over the last six months I had two situations when I had to deal at work with a person I don't particularly like. The first problem was complete lack of competencies. You can imagine that working together with that person was quite, let's say, challenging. Despite the fact I didn't see this video before I had a heartfelt belief that I need to change my inner narrative. Fortunately, my path to enlightenment didn't last long cause our manager spotted the problem soon and move him to another department.
    The second situation I encountered is from last a few weeks and the problem is quite the opposite. This person is really well-educated and ambitious but he would like to change the whole world, including others people's work. Currently I'm starting a new job so I'm not the best example how to get on with someone I don't like :)

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  28. I think that at work we shouldn't divide persons that we like or don't. At work we just need to respect everyone else no matter how annoying they are or how they behave. If we show respect to each other our relations will be good enough to work efficiently. I know, that is hard to do that, because I used to work with Oliwer who was so annoying, that me and my colleagues can't hold out even one hour with him alone. But we had to deal with him, because we knew that if we don't he can
    tell the boss about our behavior. Now I'm changing my job and I hope that my future team will be nice.

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  29. I think that at work we shouldn't divide persons that we like or don't. At work we just need to respect everyone else no matter how annoying they are or how they behave. If we show respect to each other our relations will be good enough to work efficiently. I know, that is hard to do that, because I used to work with Oliwer who was so annoying, that me and my colleagues can't hold out even one hour with him alone. But we had to deal with him, because we knew that if we don't he can
    tell the boss about our behavior. Now I'm changing my job and I hope that my future team will be nice.

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